The Student
by CaptainSicarius
Summary: Tai Ling Liao is a tiger the age of 11 who is a servant at the Jade Palace. She is bullied by the other servants, and wants to become a student of Shifu's or of the Furious Five, but Shifu will not let her become one. She has to prove herself before she is accepted by everyone countless times, and then what happens after that? May have more chapters, depends.


**A/N So I'd like some plot bunnies if it wouldn't be any bother to you... Some interesting stuff, maybe things in the actual plot. Review to send me these of shoot me a pm, thanks c:**

**Prologue**

_The little tiger cub cried as the old master picked her up from the heap of scrappy cloth on the ground. "She can't be like Tai Lung_, _he thought, examining her. She would be a strong tiger, much like Tigress or the Five. But he couldn't risk it, so he walked through the crowds, a rhino guard at his side, and took her to the Jade Palace, and put the baby in the hands of a rabbit servant. "Make her into a servant," he commanded. The rabbit hurried to the back rooms, and raised the baby to serve._

**Chapter One**

"Tai Ling!" a voice called, making the tiger squirm. The eleven year old Maltese Tiger rolled over on her mat, and tugged her ears closed.

"Wake up! Make breakfast for the masters," it called again, this time bringing the rabbit the voice belonged to. She was an old, fat rabbit, with long whiskers. She was quick to grow impatient, and Tai Ling knew this from experience with the small lady. Tai Ling was a bit slow in the kitchen or while cleaning, and Dia would hit her knuckles with a ruler or stick. The tiger couldn't understand why she would do that if she needed to use her hands to do her work.

Tai Ling sighed, shaking her blue-ish gray head. She opened her amber eyes, and looked upon Dia, the head servant. Upside down, the rabbit looked like a lumpy, angry dumpling, and the tiger smirked to herself. "Alright, coming," she yawned before stretching her limbs, walking out to the kitchens to make the morning meal of oatmeal and tofu. The masters were just waking up, also, and so she saw them walking around the palace as well. The other servants looked at her with annoyed glares. She was sort of bullied and tossed around by them, and she loathed them as much as they hated her, but it was no use, because she was younger than all of them, and the rabbits and pigs in the palace would only usurp her dignity by calling her out in front of the masters. That was probably the reason, Tai Ling thought, that Shifu would not let her become a student under his tutelage.

"Hurry! You're late, Tai Ling," one of the other servants pestered. Tai Ling quickly ran into the kitchen and started putting oats into bowls and pouring boiling water into them and stirring until it was mushy. The latter was making tofu, still nagging her to keep up with her own work. When she had finally finished, and when the rabbit finally shut her mouth, the tiger took four of the bowls and the rabbit three of them, and they proceeded to serve the Furious Five, the Dragon Warrior, and Master Shifu their meals.

Tai Ling watched as Shifu eyed her. She was more unreliable than all of his servants, and she had heard that he was planning for her to be made a guard, so she would at least get out of his whiskers for a while. She sighed, and wondered why the other servants disliked her so much. She was "unreliable" because she would sneak out to train herself in the art of Kung Fu almost every day, and would be missing for hours. It became a normal ruitine, and nobody missed her, unless her absence was used for blackmail by the rabbits.

After she was done serving breakfast, Tai Ling bowed, and returned to the kitchen. She then went through the side door that led down a hallway where the servants resided. When she got to her room, she changed out of her servant uniform and into a vest and pants to train.

Sometimes, after she was done serving breakfast, Tai Ling would sneak out to train. That day, she did. The tiger stealthily crept her way out of the palace, and made her way to a grove of ironwood trees. But one tree in the grove was a peach tree, and was Tai Ling's favorite tree, and her grove. She would eat peaches from that tree for lunch, and then come back in. This was where she could be free, if only for a few hours a day.

She looked around, and breathed in the scent of peaches. She sighed, and plucked one off of a branch of the tree, and bit into it's juicy fruit. It was the season of peaches, and that meant that the fruit was its best at that time. She dug a hole, and placed the pit gently there, and patted dirt over it for cover.

As quickly as she did this, Tai Ling started to punch the ironwood trees, strengthening not only her paws, but her precision, accuracy, and muscular strength as well. She did this action for minutes, only stopping for a quick breath. When she finished with that, she dragged out a practice dummy she had stolen from the palace that she had put in the hollowed out trunk of one of the ironwoods. She placed it in the middle of the grove, and she proceeded to punch and kick at it, using Tigress's style that she had watched the master use in the training that she had secretly watched from a wall. A year before, she had mastered jumping and endurance because it came naturally to a tiger.

Tai Ling stopped training as longing flashed over her features. She had asked Shifu to be a student in Kung Fu at the Jade Palace, but he said, "No, you are a servant. You will never learn Kung Fu." He didn't understand, and wouldn't listen to the tiger if she spoke, like she was invisible. She knew Shifu wasn't like this all the time; he showed affection to all his students. But she wasn't a student, but as servant, and he didn't even take pity upon them. But soon there was a Kung Fu show that starred the Furious Five plus the Dragon Warrior. Tai Ling smiled with wit, having carefully created a plan of action to show Shifu that she was worthy.

Her plan was that while the shows were going on, when Shifu asked the audience to challenge the masters, she would come down to face them. Her friend, Cricket, had told her while she was practicing that she would be a match for any of the masters.

Cricket was Tai Ling's only friend. As his name suggested, he was a tiny cricket, and he lived in the tiger's quarters, having found out that she was no threat to him long ago, when she was just a cub. Monkey and Viper were friendly, but mainly avoided the servant.

After going hours after the time she came in for dinner, Tai Ling finally got exhausted, and prepared herself for a scolding when she got back to the palace, having been gone longer than normal. They knew something was going on, but Tai Ling wouldn't lie to them; she kept her mouth shut, and didn't tell them anything. She did whisper the plan to Cricket, though, and he was the king of listening.

She made her way back to the window to her room, and slipped in, unnoticed by anyone but Cricket, who chirped his presence. Tai Ling smiled at her small friend, and sat under the windowsill, where he usually perched. "So, what are they doing out there this time?" she asked.

Cricket chuckled. "Dia's yelling her head off for you, we better be quiet," the small insect whispered.

As if on cue, Dia barged her chubby little figure in, and whisper-shouted, "Why weren't you at dinner this time, Tai Ling? We were shorthanded!"

Tai Ling was scared of Dia whens he yelled and looked furious. She sat in the corner, careful to cover Cricket behind her so that Dia wouldn't see him. "I was getting rid of the dead grass on the grounds, Master Po asked me to," she lied. Master Po was more friendly to her than the Five, and sometimes hanged out with her when Cricket couldn't. She would beg Po to help train her in Kung Fu, but he always refused, nervous that if Shifu found out that he would get very angry at him.

Dia cupped her face in her hands for a moment, then removed them, as if putting on a new face. She sighed, "Fine, do what Master Po says, but don't take so long that you don't serve dinner, Tai Ling! Honestly, you need to work faster."

Tai Ling _was _actually a fast worker, but she purposely took forever to get the job done because she didn't want anything to do with Dia or any of the other servants.

After the chubby rabbit left the room and slammed the sliding door, Tai Ling and Cricket burst out laughing, holding their sides.

"She falls for anything," Cricket chuckled in his squeaky voice. He sighed and giggled once more, then went to his bed on the windowsill.

"It's a good thing we come up with such good excuses when we get bored," she smirked. The two had four more excuses, and would quickly come up with more.

And with those words, the two friends of different species fell asleep.


End file.
